For many, starting the day by downing a handful of pills has become the norm, a natural accompaniment to their eggs and toast.

You take pills because you are taught to, and that’s what most people are accustomed to. Because somehow the drugs are supposed to wipe the slate clean and zero out your not so healthy lifestyle choices. Inherently you know that the drugs are not the best thing for you, but you figure that you can settle for good enough if the pills can help you just get by.

There is a reason that every drug or pill that you are prescribed comes with a list of side effects and warnings. Continually putting foreign/toxic substances into your body over the long run often creates more illness than health.

The reality is that the body is designed to heal from the inside out and express life through an inborn intelligent energy, and it is only when this energy is impeded that the body begins to break down.

Drugging an imbalanced body does nothing to bring it back into balance, and in fact while on the surface it may appear that the drugs are serving a positive purpose, underneath, the body is thrown farther into a state of stress and dis-ease. In effect, you have created a house divided.

The natural, recuperative power of the body is now pitted against the drug’s toxic effects. Even when drugs are designed as closely as possible to work in harmony with the human body, it simply is not feasible to introduce chemicals into the body without also inducing stress.

You are either working to support the body’s innate healing energies or you are working against it. You can’t have it both ways and expect to see positive change over a lifetime.

The key to producing a lifetime of health and wellness is to develop a unified front; to unleash the full power of the body’s meridian systems and then to nurture it through exercise, good nutrition, adequate rest, and a positive mental outlook.

Acupuncture works in unison with the body and serves to optimize your innate healing potential. It is the natural choice to replenish and maintain optimal health!

Just a small trip back to the early 90’s. As silly as it seems, not much has changed. Well, maybe the background music but definitely not the sentiment.

We live in a society that wants everything now. The faster, the better. We want things yesterday, not in ten minutes. This includes our food, our entertainment, and even our healing.

We want to be better now! We want to take a pill, have it all go away (whatever our IT is), and go on with our lives. Period.

Acupuncture and herbs don’t work that way. (Sorry to bust your bubbles.)

This is (unfortunately) a scenario that sometimes happens here at the clinic:

People come, wanting to try acupuncture. They are excited, it is something new; (or maybe they are nervous because it is something new.) They exclaim they have tried everything else and nothing has worked. Acupuncture is their last hope. They are hedging all of their bets on this.

And then it happens: three, five, seven treatments and their “issues” have not resolved yet. Or maybe there is change but other things are changing, not the issue they came for.

There is frustration, disappointment.

They ask “How long will this take? When can I stop coming?”

We encourage; we know it can be a long process.

They are disillusioned, don’t understand; they want it “now”.

They quit coming, they don’t show up for an appointment, they quit taking their herbs. They jump to another treatment strategy that is going to be “the one.” This time something will work, and fast. It is the best new thing.

You can’t blame them, we all want instant fixes. We live in a society that tells us this is justified, no matter what the topic. We don’t have staying power or follow-through when it gets hard because we are told we don’t need it.

People expect Oriental Medicine to work like Western medicine. And it doesn’t. Oriental Medicine is a whole body approach rather than isolating a symptom or an issue. While Western medicine narrows down, Oriental Medicine broadens. Neither are better or worse, they just work differently; you can’t apply the rules of one to the practice of the other.

It is important to have a clear idea of what to expect when deciding to begin a course of treatment. Rome was not built in a day and the issue you are seeking help for did not materialize over night.

This can be deceiving; it may look like a symptom suddenly broke out but what were the energetic factors and conditions that contributed to it being able to appear at all? How long were these present? How long has the qi been stagnant and not circulating? This is the place that Oriental Medicine attempts to address.

This means that results are gradual. Acute conditions may have relief in a couple of months; chronic conditions may take years. The process is gentle, energetic, and transformative; and not instant.

The process involves taking a look at what habits you have that contribute to the condition and changing them; which can mean lots of self-examination. It also means sticking through when it gets hard. As with any transformation, you have to stay long enough to see the magic; and there is always that dark moment where we are asked if we want to turn back or if we want to keep going.

The beautiful thing about Oriental Medicine is it focuses on body balancing; simultaneously you are affecting areas and issues you weren’t even working on. It is fun to see patients who come in for a session saying something that plagued them for years is suddenly gone, something they did not even think was worth mentioning in the intake; something the practitioner did not even know about.

For those who are patient and have staying power, amazing things can happen. You just have to hang in there, keep putting one foot in front of the other.

One of the biggest myths about acupuncture is that “once you start, you have to go forever.”

First of all, it is entirely up to you how long you choose to continue to get treatments. Of course, like any other healthy habit, the longer you maintain it, the better your quality of life. But just to clear up some confusion, let’s look at the process of a comprehensive schedule of acupuncture care in another light.

Perhaps the most apt analogy for continuing care for the meridian system is reconstructive orthodontics for your teeth. Both disciplines consist of an initial phase of care that usually involves overcoming a weakness, followed by a reconstructive or rehabilitative phase of care, and finally culminating in wellness or maintenance.

The earliest phase of your care usually consists of the highest visit frequency. In cases of chronic imbalances within the meridian system it is common to initially require treatments a few days a week until your bodies energy is properly balanced and restored.

Using our orthodontic analogy, this would be the point at which the brackets and wires are put on your teeth and you are seen for check-ups every couple weeks. Since there is no wire affixed within your meridian system, your acupuncture visits occur more frequently than orthodontic appointments, and are instead “wired together” by specific exercises, herbal prescriptions, self-care recommendations, etc.

As balance returns to your body, your visit frequency is diminished. This is the phase in which the orthodontist would also begin spacing out his visits and begin to “tweak” the wires to make fine adjustments to your teeth and allow them to settle into their new structural pattern. In both cases, this is a critical phase of care in that it is setting the stage for lifelong wellness or maintenance.

In regard to orthodontics, this is when you would be fitted for a retainer to be worn at least nightly for the rest of your life, or for as long as you wish to maintain healthy teeth.

As for acupuncture, this marks the transition to a schedule of wellness or maintenance care to ensure a lifelong abundance of health and well-being.

The maintenance or wellness phase of care is without a doubt the most important. What is sickness, but a lack of wellness? The whole objective of everything leading up to your wellness care is to get your body back to its natural state of balance. Once there, staying well is simply a matter of sustaining that balance.

Wear your retainer and maintain a life of health and wellness. Or neglect your maintenance and have the braces put back on? The choice is clear.